AIBU about people who say ‘they worked hard to get to where they are’?

[MessyMissyMe]

Generally these are highly paid people who were able to go to University (support from parents/inherited intellect/confidence and self belief built up by secure, happy childhood) or had the resources to start their own business and were lucky enough to get remunerated by employment that they enjoyed and were good at, didn’t have outside influences or stressors that made things harder/took up time they needed to study or build a career.

They basically are just LUCKY and don’t deserve their success anymore than a cleaner or a care worker living hand to mouth in social housing deserves their lack of.

AIBU to get annoyed at people who say this?

I know what you mean OP. Lots of people work extremely hard and will never earn massive money. It doesn't mean that people who have done well haven't worked hard, or that their success is undeserved.

I have worked hard to get where I am but I am not blinkered enough to recognise that there is an element of luck and privilege too. I'm not as lucky or as privileged as some of my colleagues/peers and you can't always make up for that just by working harder.

I also recognise that other people work for extremely hard, maybe harder than me but due to a number of factors won't earn as much.

@MummyMayo1988 but he is lucky that he could do that as you were there to take care of your child. You are both lucky you are well enough.

Many people take the opportunity to improve their lives, they get their qualifications, work hard and still life has other ideas.

@MarvellousMonsters
Luck or privilege plays a huge part in how successful you are in life

Sure it does. But neither is it “all luck”. A working class kid from a council estate (parents making 15k a year p) who ends up with a six figure salary was probably not “just lucky “. A typical middle class kid (parents making 50k a year) who ends up making a seven figure salary as boss of his own company probably isn’t “just lucky”.

I think some of the people calling the OP chippy are being somewhat chippy themselves.

There is a massive correlation between coming from a stable, middle class and affluent background and doing well in life.

Of course there are people who do well despite coming from a poorer background, but they often benefitted from the ‘privilege’ of loving, supportive parents/ great teachers etc.

I say that as someone from a working class background who went to uni and has a well- paid, interesting job. Of course I worked hard, but I was also lucky!

I often meet people who worked just as hard as me, but circumstances meant it didn’t pay off for them…for all sorts of reasons!

It really annoys me when politicians infer wealthy people ‘worked hard’ for it, as if a nurse or teacher just sits on their arse all day!! Especially when research shows most entrepreneurs come from wealthy backgrounds and had friends and relatives who could give them massive loans to kick start their businesses.

I've said this on another thread and I think it applies here too, the opportunity to be successful (if you're counting success as material wealth) is open to anyone, but, it can't be open to everyone.
The opportunities aren't limitless, there are only so many highly paid, or even comfortably paid roles out there at any one time, in any sphere, to be filled. If someone leaves the top rung, and everyone moves up a rung, there's then a gap at the bottom, too many gaps at the bottom and the whole thing comes down.

And even if there were, who's going to do the lowly jobs that are needed to support these higher paid jobs? Who is a manager going to manage, if all their employees are also managers?
If I get a better paid job tomorrow, that is seen as me succeeding, my current job role doesn't become defunct because I no longer do it, someone else will need to be found to do it, with the same low pay, I'm out of the 'unsuccessful' bracket, and someone else enters into it.

On a group level, everyone being 'successful' doesn't work, those lower paid roles are needed to support the upper tiers, because without them there are no upper tiers.
Some people are either willfully or deliberately blind to this, I mean after all, who wants to think that their success is at the cost of someone else's? Of course these types of people are going to insist their hard work has got them there, and that anyone who isn't there doesn't have the work ethic or resilience they do - the alternative is to admit they're benefiting from others work.

I don’t normally jump on threads but I had to with this one. It is singularly the most irritating thing someone can say to me. Like many normal people I have worked since I was 14. After doing poss hundreds of min wage jobs I now earn an okay living as a domme (well I did before covid hit and then pregnancy) I have lost count of the rich clients who have said this to me. The last was born into a wealthy family that had largely accumulated their money through slaves. He spends his time on his land with his lake, swimming pool etc. People who say this have no idea of the real world. But F them. It means everything that we earn and then buy means far more to us.

Totally agree - getting on in life is dependent upon birth, luck and our confidence - some of us worked super hard all our lives but got nowhere -

It's one of my most hated privileged sayings ever. Pretty sure someone worrying about every penny they have working 2/3 jobs has worked harder tbh.

some of us worked super hard all our lives but got nowhere

Depends what you mean by nowhere doesn't it? By who's rules? I'm probably nowhere by many peoples standards but I'm exactly where I want to be by my own.

Warren Buffett, one of the greatest investors in history, put his success down to winning the genetic lottery, by which he meant being born in a place and time where his talents are valued and where he has been largely safe from physical peril and hardship. I come from a pretty disadvantaged background, I have worked very hard for my success including going through uni and I continue to do so. However, I won the genetic lottery by being born in this country as opposed to, say, Afghanistan, and by being intelligent and healthy, at least so far. The vast majority of us in the UK won the lottery of life compared with the vast majority of other people on this planet. Yes, I worked hard and I don’t decry much more privileged people than me who have also worked hard. But none of us ‘deserves’ our success any more than a little girl in Kabul deserves to have her life curtailed by the Taliban.
So yes, OP, I agree with you, it’s irritating, I have a (very middle class) friend who ascribes anyone’s life that is less prosperous than her own, which is 99pc of the UK, to ‘choices’ as if others had the option to have rich parents, a rich husband and a 5 bed house in a nice village like she has, but for perverse reasons of their own deliberately chose not to avail themselves! She’s so lovely in other ways - and genuinely thinks she’s left wing - I can’t bring myself to challenge it. Hard work doesn’t entitle anyone to success and failure can’t automatically be attributed to lack of industry. Ignore people telling you that you’re being chippy, you’re not - you made an accurate observation.

Yes @InTheNameOfAllThatIsHonest but there will have been applicants whose hard work didn’t pay off. I obviously don’t know the ins and outs of your scholarship or the criteria but I’m confident that spaces would have been limited and people who worked just as hard as you and achieved the same grades won’t have been awarded the same scholarship. That’s the point, that is luck. It was hard work to get into a position to be in the running but luck that you secured a space.

Yes YABU. I’m pretty happy with where I’ve got to. I had a child at 18, worked full time since leaving school then decided to go back to uni, also worked a part time job in an area with no family help. Finished university whilst pregnant for the second time and now a full qualified medical professional and went back to work when my second was 6 weeks old. I believe I’ve worked pretty hard for it and now getting the reward.

How did you afford housing & childcare when you were at after your first dc & when you went to uni?

The issue is that many people who have been brought up in a stable environment and who have well off parents may indeed have worked hard but you want to write them off as not having done so. there are also a whole group in the middle who have been to uni who have worked hard to get careers that are high earning ( but not handed to them on a plate) so of course your flippant comment will irk people.

People like that (including my husband and I (as a mature student)) do also appreciate that low earners often have jobs where they too work hard. People do deserve their holidays and material belongings if they have earned the money to buy them.

@Cornettoninja

Yes *@InTheNameOfAllThatIsHonest* but there will have been applicants whose hard work didn’t pay off. I obviously don’t know the ins and outs of your scholarship or the criteria but I’m confident that spaces would have been limited and people who worked just as hard as you and achieved the same grades won’t have been awarded the same scholarship. That’s the point, that is luck. It was hard work to get into a position to be in the running but luck that you secured a space.

Is it, though? The scholarship committee isn't flipping a coin or running a random lottery to decide; they're selecting the candidates whose experience and qualifications appeal the most. That's not luck securing the space.

Everyone gets the opportunity - it's up to everyone to apply them selves.

😆 The whole point is everyone doesn't get the same opportunity

Hmm… but taken to its logical conclusion, NOBODY should be given credit for achieving anything. It was all fated/preordained by DNA and patents and environment

@supermoonrising I don’t think that’s the logical conclusion to acknowledging luck, I think it’s an opportunity to examine the inequalities in society, and perhaps to examine what success is defined as.

I suppose it makes a difference whether you subscribe to the idea of privilege (as in white privilege, male privilege etc.) and the fact you can hold privilege even if you don’t necessarily immediately recognise it.

@gwenneh and there's an element of luck in that. You might have gone to the same uni as one of the selection committee and they take a shine to you. You might be a bit more personable in the interview. It might happen that your research interest is something one of the panel is really into. These scholarships are ultra competitive. For every person that gets a scholarship, there are many more who miss out despite being extremely competent and deserving.

And I say this as someone who got one. Apparently 200 people applied and I was the only 'winner'. I worked bloody hard for it and put enormous amounts of effort in, but I'm not deluded enough to think I was also lucky.

*wasn't

I’m sick of hearing this. I worked 80 hours a week with no holiday or time off for 5 years snd now I’m pretty well off. I worked decking hard for what I have.

The scholarship committee isn't flipping a coin or running a random lottery to decide; they're selecting the candidates whose experience and qualifications appeal the most. That's not luck securing the space.

How did the scholarship come about?

I know someone from a deprived background who left school without qualifications. One of the teachers at her dd's school pulled her aside & said your dd is incredibly bright. The teacher had worked at a private school & helped with bursary/scholarship forms & the child got a scholarship with 100% bursary. Her mum had no idea her ability was above average, she had no idea you could get bursaries & no idea how to go about finding out about one. Her dd was lucky the teacher recognised her ability.

I suppose it makes a difference whether you subscribe to the idea of privilege (as in white privilege, male privilege etc.) and the fact you can hold privilege even if you don’t necessarily immediately recognise it.

This it's about recognising your privilege but people struggle with the concept.

Is it, though? The scholarship committee isn't flipping a coin or running a random lottery to decide; they're selecting the candidates whose experience and qualifications appeal the most. That's not luck securing the space

No, but it’s luck that in year you’ve applied that no one has the edge over you. If spaces are limited it’s likely it will be decided on factors that you couldn’t have had any effect on with hard work alone Maybe you won a silver in the 100m and there’s someone who won bronze (if you want to take the scenario further these two people could have exactly the same running times but other competitors on the day itself resulted in second and third place).

It’s all hypothetical without knowing the criteria but it’s perfectly possible one scholarship candidate could lose out to another simply because they were at a worse school but achieved exactly the same A level results and had a similarly impressive extra curricular cv.

I say I worked hard to get where I am because I did.

We were a very poor family and the first time I had a modest amount of money was when I earned it and got my student grant.

My "father" fucked off when I was three months old because he couldn't handle the pressure of being a parent. He claimed poverty at court so never gave a penny towards keep. He has holidayed several times a year all of his life.

My first holiday was when my mum got very sick and John Lewis (who she worked part time for while trying to get some exams under her own belt) paid for us ALL to stay in a hotel by the sea for a week while she convalesced.... we felt like millionnaires...

Cut to today and I've worked fucking hard to earn good money and be able to make it to a few cheeky center parcs breaks per year...(steady on!), my kids now have privilege no doubt.... but I can see that at work... some people don't realise the journey.

People assume that I went to private school, probably had a pool and a pony and always had money in my pocket...

I lived in a council house and our neighbours used to post dog shit through the letter box because they didn't like a single parent family living in their street.... so yeh.. I think YABU in saying this.

My only gift was being able to work hard. And I did. I'm disabled now, so I won't be able to work hard much longer... but I deserve every achievement... I refuse to be humble about that graft...

*supermoonrising I don’t think that’s the logical conclusion to acknowledging luck, I think it’s an opportunity to examine the inequalities in society, and perhaps to examine what success is defined as.

I suppose it makes a difference whether you subscribe to the idea of privilege (as in white privilege, male privilege etc.) and the fact you can hold privilege even if you don’t necessarily immediately recognise it*

I believe in privilege but I also believe in free will. Many people spend significant parts if their lives in cruise control. Yes they might be working very hard day to day but they may have never sat down and evaluated the options - the opportunities and options for making As Much Money as Possible (if that is what you want to do). The options and opportunities that they have open to them thanks to being born in one of the very wealthiest countries in the world. It sounds an easy question to ask (how can I make as much money as I possibly can?) but the answers to it are often not to our liking. Many people prefer to to stay in cruise control. Or to do a career they enjoy - rather than evaluate their skills within a mindset of “how can I utilise my skills and opportunities to make as much money as I possibly can?”…. the answer may be you need to retrain. Or you need to leave your friends and family and relocate away. Or you need to do something mundane and boring for several years while earning a pittance. Or you need to risk total failure and being back at square one again 5/10 years down the road. Sound like fun? To many people it doesn’t, so instead they stay in a kind of comfort zone. Some do it happily while acknowledging and applauding those who are (currently) living outside it. While others don’t acknowledge the risks the successful people who stepped outside it took, and instead focus only on “luck” and “privilege” to explain away disparities with “successful people” who had more or less exactly the same opportunities as they themselves enjoyed.

This!

I went uni, and I work my bloody socks off. We are just about comfortable but we can’t afford a holiday abroad every year, we are only just about to buy or first house and I’m 36. If we were fortunate to have a successful pregnancy I would not be able to afford to take a long maternity leave. We are not rich, we just aren’t on the poverty line.

Being able to buy the house is mostly the luck of having inherited a chunk of our deposit from my grandparents. I’ve been saving for 8 years for the rest of it and would need another 8 years without the inheritance by which time many lenders would not offer me enough years to pay it off without a high mortgage. Prior to that I was working hard to pay the debt of uni because I don’t come from a well off family and uni was financially difficult for me. If I came from a family who could have helped with rent for uni, or paid my fees for teacher training something, I’d have been able to have saved for a deposit straight out of uni.

If I came from a well off family, I wouldn’t have had to put off starting to try for a family for so long because of finances. Now I’m facing the prospect of infertility and I wish I’d been able to try sooner.

So yeah, it is partly down to luck, partly down to your family background and partly down to hard work. But hard work alone doesn’t always make it happen. People who come from more well-off backgrounds, or have a better run of luck get things in a more timely fashion and don’t have to make nearly as many compromises in their lives.